


let the flood carry away all my pictures of you

by jessewrites



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, shay is mentioned vaguely for like 0.2 seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessewrites/pseuds/jessewrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world spins at approximately one thousand kilometers per hour at the equator and you can feel every single one of them. (As a scientist, you know this is an exaggeration –you don’t even live near the equator - but sometimes when you look at her you can almost believe it.)</p>
<p>(or: you could have had the world)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let the flood carry away all my pictures of you

The world spins at approximately one thousand kilometers per hour at the equator and you can feel every single one of them. (As a scientist, you know this is an exaggeration –you don’t even live near the equator - but sometimes when you look at her you can almost believe it.)

When you look at her for the first time you see the stars. In stolen wine and brief moments of peace, you see what could have been.

(you’re her monitor, this can’t happen, you can’t – but oh, no one’s ever looked at you like that. like you’re anything but background noise and facts and reports.) 

For the first time, you think you see hope. This could work.` 

One night she calls you up and tells you she’s waiting outside. You run and laugh and fall in love in the streets, silent save for the sound of your own beating hearts.

 You always dreamed of falling in love with someone in university, of having a fairytale love story. This is as close as you’re going to get. 

She almost breaks up with you once. You’d said _I need some space,_ or something similar. You hardly remember now. She met her on some online dating thing, and she tells you she was beautiful. She tells you she was beautiful but she doesn’t say she was perfect. When she comes back two months later, all steel-soft eyes and please-forgive-me’s, you can’t help but let her in.

You’ve never done anything but let her in.

You wonder if you’ve (somehow, miraculously) made it when she starts coughing up rubies in the sink. She heaves her life into the open air and you try to pretend the red on her skin is lipstick. (She never wore red lipstick. You know that.) 

In the hospital she doesn’t look like herself. She is pale and grim and she tries to crack a joke but you can see the fear in her eyes. 

“It’s going to be alright,” you whisper one night; you both know you are lying. Somehow you manage to fall asleep. You’re glad for the release. 

You are woken at precisely six-thirty seven in the morning by the unending tone of the heart monitor. You don’t realize, for a few seconds, what it means. 

They don’t have to drag you kicking and screaming from her bedside. They don’t have to drag you anywhere. You calmly call for a nurse, and you don’t even cry. Not that night, anyways. It’s all very logical – woman gets illness, illness gets worse, woman doesn’t make it. If you had followed your assignment, if you hadn’t gotten  _attached,_ this wouldn’t have happened.

 You knew this would happen. You knew she had a predisposition to the illness, but it was never real. 

It doesn’t sink in, really, for a few days. You half expect her to say she was playing a prank, to pull up to your apartment with dinner and wine. 

You begin to accept that thinking rationally isn’t going to work. 

Sometimes you think it’s getting better but then you see some small thing that reminds you of her and you’re right back in that hospital room. You don’t think you will ever escape that hospital room.

(you’re her monitor, this can’t happen you can’t – but oh, you weren’t supposed to care.) 

As a scientist, you know you have to think logically – this was almost certain to occur.   
  
You try to organize your thoughts, to prepare the reports, the speeches, the conclusions. You don’t think about her. 

You don’t think about anything, for a while.

 You fall into a cycle. You’re almost certain that this is where you get better, where you realize that she’s gone but that’s okay. Then something reminds you  At some point you forget what it was like to live with her, but you can’t imagine living without her. 

All you know is her. 

(you’re her monitor, this can’t happen, you can’t – but oh, somehow this was always going to end like this.) 

You don’t remember what life was like before Cosima Niehaus. You think you should remember. You think that should worry you. 

(The world spins at approximately one thousand miles per hour at the equator, but you can’t feel anything at all.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> whoo! i haven't written cophine in s o l o n g ! and this is really short, apologies! 
> 
> kudos/comments are very much appreciated 8)


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